House of Kook is a team of two established interior designers, Kirsten Dodds and Amy McKenzie. They came to us in the lead-up to the launch of their furniture brand: Kook.
Kook furniture breathes life into the stifling minimalism of South Africa’s interior design industry. Our challenge was to create a brand strategy, verbal and visual identity, and a website that lived up to their ‘kooky’ creations.
The Strategy
Our unbelievably talented friend and brand strategist Taryn Cohn jumped in to help us put together a brand strategy that anchors the kookiness of the brand. She identified the consumer need to articulate their personal style in their interiors as well as the difficulty normal people face when trying to express themselves using furniture created to follow trends.
The strategy culminated in Kook’s powerful brand positioning statement: Because you’re most you when you belong in your space.
The Messaging
With a strong brand position it tow, the messaging fell into place. Kook’s manifesto is one of our strongest ones yet but is supported by equally strong one-liners used across the website, social media, and other collateral.
The Design
The starting point and guiding force behind the visual identity was to find the balance between classic and quirky.
Along those lines, Tam presented two wordmark options with a visual system built around each. The first uses a grotesque, bold sans serif paired with italic serif type while the second is a variable wordmark with interchangeable ‘O’ counters. They loved the second concept but didn’t want to lose the interesting font pairing so we combined the two routes to create an identity that was simple and bold with points of visual interest and personality.
The Website
This was an e-commerce website-from-scratch situation, which means it wasn’t built or designed from premade themes or templates. So the sky was essentially the limit. Highlights include Kirsten and Amy’s ‘surprise’ photos on the About page, assertive but playful headings that communicate their confident and bold approach to design, as well as the moving logo banner (we call these tickers) on the home page.
Seeing it in the World
A highlight for our team was seeing our hard work going out into the world during Kook’s very successful launch. We saw brands and influencers we love opening their Kook press packages and getting excited about the collateral we had poured so much hard work into. For me, I squeaked when I saw the Me&B team reading Kook’s manifesto out loud on their Instagram story.
This project, and its launch, was one to be proud of. Their website received just under 1000 unique visitors during their brand launch from 59 different countries. They were also quickly featured in online publications like Visi, Women and Home, and Garden and Home.
